


The Trial of Perttu

by vtn



Category: Apocalyptica
Genre: Fluff, Humor, M/M, Touring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-11
Updated: 2012-12-11
Packaged: 2017-11-20 20:46:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/589473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vtn/pseuds/vtn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Perttu managed to survive being lost in middle-of-nowhere Bulgaria in the middle of the night, but the longest tour of his life was only just beginning.  Also, he smells like flowers, and Eicca keeps buying him socks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Trial of Perttu

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Zigrat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zigrat/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide! This story is for Zigrat, whose fantastic letter I was thrilled to receive as my assignment. Apocalyptica is a group I previously enjoyed on a purely musical level for their combination of heavy metal + cellos because it is literally impossible for me to disagree with that, but through researching and writing the story I've now come to know and love them as people. Such is the magic of Yuletide.
> 
> This was written specifically for the prompt of "something about the time the band lost Perttu in Bulgaria in 2006", and is mainly Perttu/Eicca ♥ but also pretty much everyone/everyone because there is so much love in this band. 
> 
> I will note that I just made up the list of cities on the tour.
> 
> A huge THANK YOU to [wrabbit](http://archiveofourown.org/users/wrabbit) for being an awesome beta reader. ♥

It's already evening by the time Perttu arrives safely in Sofia and he's so brain-dead and exhausted that he has become essentially a machine with only one function, which is playing the cello. He doesn't even stop to hug Eicca even though he'd been wanting nothing more all night, or have a chat with the other guys, but just crawls onto the stage, acknowledging his band-mates with scarcely a nod, and puts himself on cruise control until the end of the show. There's something inside him that takes over when he's up on stage, something wild and larger than life, and it doesn't fail him now; for the few hours they spend before the crowd he's worlds away.

With the show over, and pain erupting from every nerve in his body, Perttu takes a shower nearly hot enough to boil his blood, pulls on a pair of pajama pants, and then throws himself face down onto a hotel bed that's, oh fuck, heavenly soft—he is so lucky to live in a world where there are soft things to sleep on—

\---

"Hey, you." 

Perttu opens his eyes groggily and for a second doesn't know where he is. His entire body hurts. He blinks up into Mikko's face and then it all slams back into his brain—it's morning, he's in a real bed at last, he's just spent a day stalking across cornfields for some twelve hours and he just wants to go back to sleep again.

"I said hey you," Mikko repeats, a slight smile forming on his lips. "How are you doing? The others went down to breakfast, they didn't want to wake you up, but I wanted to check on you."

Perttu feels a sudden outpouring of affection all of a sudden and reaches out to grasp Mikko's hand tightly between his own. Mikko's smile widens a little. "You're an asshole and I hate you," Perttu jokes, "Let me get back to sleep now. Or die. Yes, you'll die." He nods.

"Love you too," Mikko says, patting Perttu's hand gently. "Good, get some rest. I'm going down to the buffet, I'll get you some sweet rolls." 

Perttu doesn't have enough energy to be hungry. All he wants is to rest among soft things from now until forever. He grabs a pillow, wraps his arm around it, and lets his eyes fall shut.

\---

When he comes to again there is a collection of sweet rolls balanced on a tray on the bed, and suddenly his hunger response is back in full force and he shovels them into his mouth, not even caring that he leaves pastry flakes all over the comforter. With food in his belly he feels slightly more alert, and looks around him. Eicca and Mikko are lying on the other bed, Eicca playing with his touchscreen phone and Mikko apparently dozing off. The steam coming from under the bathroom door indicates Paavo's location.

"Eicca," Perttu says, with a bit of a rasp.

"Holy fuck, he lives!" Eicca drops his phone and immediately slides off the bed to go over to him. "You've got to have a seriously crazy story to tell us." He looks like he suddenly remembers something, then, and goes over to the door, where he's dropped his bulging messenger bag. He retrieves a plastic shopping bag and brings it back over to Perttu. "Here you go. I got you a wool cap, some candy, hand warmers, extra socks…" Apparently in Perttu's peril Eicca discovered the comforts of retail therapy. 

Perttu reaches out an arm, grabs a candy bar, mumbles a 'thank you', and then lays back down in his little circle of convenience store gifts to munch quietly. His whole body is throbbing with pain, and he's glad his hotel bed provides a cushion.

Eicca gets on his back and lies down next to Perttu, their arms touching, sending a warmth through Perttu's body starting at those points of contact. The two of them watch Paavo emerge from the shower steamy and serene, with a towel wrapped around his waist (probably if Perttu had an ounce of brain left he'd take the opportunity to perv on him) and then gasp to see Perttu awake and rush over to him. Mikko peers over Paavo's shoulder at them, too.

"What," Perttu says through a mouthful of candy bar, looking up into Paavo's furrowed brows.

"Well, I just—we're sorry," Paavo says a little sheepishly. Mikko and Eicca nod in agreement, looking sympathetic. It's strange on their faces, what with Perttu being used to them cracking jokes and giving him a friendly ribbing each morning.

"Okay, great," Perttu replies and goes back to his candy bar. He wishes they'd stop talking; they are seriously encroaching on his ability to eat candy forever.

"Just ignore him, he's still mad at us," Eicca apologizes for Perttu. "I would be. I would probably have just pissed in our bunks next time I needed to go in the middle of the night, if it were me."

"That's disgusting," says Perttu, "What do you think I am, a cat? And no, I'm not mad at you, I'm just hungry." There is a bit of silence as everyone looks around awkwardly.

"Well…damn, boys, let's get this man some more food," Paavo says finally, nudging Mikko to go back down to the buffet.

\---

Their next show is in Bucharest, Romania, a surprisingly modern city with wide avenues and stunning architecture. Perttu wears his new hat and the four of them take a walk around the city, slowly as a consequence of Perttu's aching feet (and ankles, and rear end, and basically his entire lower half). 

Mikko is taking a picture of Paavo for him ("I need this for Myspace", Paavo says, pointing at a bus stop ad with a funny picture of a dog on it) and then suddenly whips around, fast as lightning: 

"Where is Perttu?"

"Um, here," Perttu says, raising his hand, from right next to Mikko.

"Good." Mikko throws his arms around Perttu and hugs him tight. "Good." Perttu hugs Mikko back, enjoying the warmth of the small body pressed up close to his own, but also rolls his eyes from next to Mikko's head. 

"What, do you think I'm just going to disappear again?" He gently pats Mikko on the shoulder, breaking away from the hug. 

"He actually ran away from _you_ the first time," Paavo says in a stage whisper, grinning. "Now take a picture."

"Oh, take a picture, take a picture, you whore," Mikko mocks him, but acquiesces, taking Paavo's phone back out of his pocket. "Put Perttu in the picture," he says, then, and pushes Perttu into the bus shelter. Perttu throws up the devil horns and makes a ridiculous face because ruining other people's tourist photos is really his life's calling.

\---

Before the show that night, Paavo makes Perttu tea with honey and lemon, and offers him an extra chair to put his feet up while he plays. Perttu drinks the tea but during the show he feels determined to stalk around the stage, hardly ever sitting down.

He showers for about forty minutes until his fingers are shriveled, but his aches are still getting worse. He flops down onto his back on the hotel bed, not even bothering to put clothes on.

"What are you doing? Why are you naked?" Mikko asks. He picks up a bit of Perttu's hair and sniffs it. "Aha. I thought something smelled like flowers."

"Because I have the worst responses to things," Perttu admits, his limbs so stiff he couldn't get off the bed if he tried.

"What are you even talking about. Can you put pants on? You're distracting me." Mikko seems more distracted by smelling Perttu's hair again than by his nudity. "Is it violets? I can't tell. Do violets even have a smell?"

"I don't know," Perttu says. 

"Oh, also I charged your phone," says Mikko. "And there is Eicca and Paavo." The door opens; apparently Mikko has superhuman hearing, which is somewhat surprising for a drummer.

"Hello Perttu, nice pose, are we filming a porno in here and you didn't tell me?" Eicca asks, and then he triumphantly extends another plastic bag on his arm. "I have cough drops, and a tiny flashlight, and more socks."

"And?" says Perttu hopefully, making his eyes as big as possible.

"And of course, there are candy bars." Eicca grins.

"I want one too," Paavo says and reaches in. He takes two. Perttu makes a face, expecting Paavo to make an even more ridiculous face back and escalate the situation into a face war as usual. Especially after that act of face aggression he committed against Paavo's Myspace photo.

But instead, Paavo tosses the candy bar back. Perttu should say no and reject this face peace treaty he has been offered, but he's greedy, and chocolate is delicious.

\---

The next night is Odessa, Ukraine, and that day they're mostly traveling, on buses and a plane where Perttu attempts to sleep even though the seat is hitting his aching muscles in all of the worst possible places. It does annoy him when Paavo and Eicca, who are sitting on either side of Perttu, shake him to wake him up when the plane's about to land, but it's only a minor annoyance and when he sees their faces above him he smiles.

There is a bit of a kerfuffle over Paavo's cello which doesn't show up in the baggage claim, and Eicca freaks out a random Ukrainian girl by asking her if she has a cello and can Paavo borrow it and please they are very nice people and will take good care of it, but they find it in the oversized luggage area and Mikko tells the girl "no more coffee for Eicca" by way of apology. 

That they're immediately shuttled off into the concert venue does mean that Eicca has no time to make a convenience store run. Perttu, somewhat amused, watches him for signs of sulking. 

The kids in Odessa, with their hair as long as Eicca's and their heavy metal T-shirts - incredibly apt in the bleakness of their surroundings - are crazy, absolutely fun, singing along with all the Metallica covers and headbanging so hard Perttu is surprised no one in the crowd gets injured. Perttu himself bangs his chin on the neck of his cello and he's probably even bleeding but he's having entirely too much fun to notice.

That is, until they go to a bar afterward and Eicca starts mopping at Perttu's chin with a rag, looking very concerned. Perttu pushes him off, playfully, and tells him to drink more. Eicca is happy to comply.

The four of them are absolutely trashed and filthy by the time they make it back to the hotel, and Perttu is very glad he nabbed a couple of the little bottles of shampoo from the last place.

"Perttu?" Paavo asks when Perttu emerges. "Perttu, why do you smell like lilies?"

"Because I'm a thief," he says, grinning and scrubbing his hair off with a towel, "A filthy shampoo thief."

"And also," Paavo continues, his voice sounding a little slurred, "Are you okay?"

"Huh, what? I'm fine," Perttu says. It looks like someone's filled the ice container, and he stuffs a couple of ice cubes in his mouth before he perches on his and Paavo's bed, figuring he'd better get to work hydrating himself lest he go to sleep still drunk. 

"I don't know. You looked pretty dead when we got in here," says Paavo.

"He's just drunk," Mikko says, gesturing with the remote at the television as if to emphasize that there's a game on, and it's important, so Paavo should shut up.

"I think you might have drunk too much," Paavo presses on. "No self-medication, now," he advises Perttu, wagging his finger. Perttu eats another ice cube and doesn't respond. It is true that the drink has dulled his pain for a little while.

Mikko gestures at the television again and this time clears his throat pointedly. Eicca snores from where he's sprawled shirtless with his arm across Mikko's chest, somehow impressively remaining asleep. Then Mikko cheers and throws his arms up in the air: "Ha _ha_! He scores!"

"And as for you, you will never score," says Paavo. He looks slyly to Perttu for confirmation, but Perttu just snorts and shakes his head, and ties a towel around his waist so he can go look for a Coke machine.

\---

They hop on a redeye not much later and make their way to Moscow, where Perttu (who is a wee bit hung over despite his best efforts) finally decides he's had enough of his band-mates' genuflection and sulks under a blanket in the hotel room all day with two pairs of socks on, sucking down cups of instant coffee and half-heartedly reading a novel he picked up in a train station. He hardly even notices the passage of time until it's suddenly too dark to make out the words on the pages of the book.

Not long after sunset he hears the door open, and Eicca comes in red-nosed and smelling of cold.

"Hey," he says, unbuttoning his jacket and dropping his bag on the floor so he can flick on the light switch. "Chin up, all right? No more irrational fear of going outside for you, or your skin will get so pale you can see through it." 

"It's not an irrational fear of going outside." Perttu frowns and pretends to be very interested in his book. "Besides, you're one to judge, you're paler than me," he mutters as an afterthought. 

"Well, what is it?" Eicca says, sounding a little concerned. "Usually you're the biggest tourist of us all."

"No, that's Paavo with his camera," Perttu says, miming snapping photos of everything in sight with Paavo's typical look of deep concentration. Then he sighs, and decides to be frank. "Look. It's just, you're all giving me things, making sure I'm still standing right next to you, taking care of me—you've been treating me like I'm made of glass." Perttu shrugs loosely, and then draws his blanket further around himself. "Not that I don't appreciate the attention, but I'm not that vulnerable."

"Of course you're not." Eicca rolls his eyes dismissively. Perttu gives him the finger. "Oh, you want me to prove it, do you?" Eicca opens his bag and pulls out a half-eaten apple, which he throws at Perttu before he can think to duck. It smacks him just below his shoulder.

"Ouch, never mind!" Perttu says, wincing. "I'm made of glass, I take it all back!" He rubs his soon-to-be-bruised skin.

"Seriously, though." Eicca walks over and sits on the edge of the bed, pulling his legs up underneath him in a mirror image of Perttu's position. He picks up the apple and takes another bite out of it. "You know I'm not so afraid of hurting you. I just want to keep from making the same mistake again. It's the same with the others." He looks Perttu straight in the eye, and Perttu sighs and meets his gaze. 

"The sooner we all forget, the better," Perttu says. He shrugs. "You didn't make a mistake."

"Uh, yeah we did," says Eicca, adamantly. And Perttu thinks twice. To be fair, they should have checked to make sure he was still on the bus, or noticed at some point that they couldn't hear him laughing at their terrible jokes or humming to himself from his bunk. But it doesn't matter. He's just sick of it all.

Everyone keeps reminding him of the worst night of his life, and right now Perttu just wants to forget. He wants it to just be something that happened in the past, something they can joke about later.

"Yeah, well okay, you did make a mistake. In fact, you made a terrible mistake!" he continues on, because he wants to see Eicca laugh while he's keeping a straight face. "Such a terrible mistake that I should really just leave you all. But you know why I stay? It's because I like to suffer. I like to suffer and that's why I make things worse for myself." That last line is probably at least a tiny bit true, if Perttu is honest with himself, but he hopes the rest of it is ridiculous enough to make Eicca see Perttu doesn't really take their mistake seriously.

"I can't tell if you're being serious," Eicca says, looking a little lost instead. "I really can't."

"Did you forget who I am so soon?" Perttu almost feels a little pity for Eicca, if Eicca really believes they hurt him that badly. "Because I was gone for one day?" He reaches out and touches Eicca's face gently with his fingertips. "Being serious? No—I'm never serious."

Eicca breathes a sigh of relief. "Except when you are serious."

"Except when I am." Perttu agrees. He presses the full palm of his hand against Eicca's face now. "I am serious about how we should just forget it all, though. It was a nightmare. That's all. Like a bad dream."

Eicca leans into Perttu's hand. "You know what, though?"

"What?" Perttu puts his other hand on the other side of Eicca's face, and starts to massage his scalp a little with his fingers.

"I like buying you socks," says Eicca, looking a little wicked. "I like buying you socks and watching your annoyed face because who wants socks? Nobody wants socks. It's like your grandmother at Christmas, you're annoyed but you have to be nice. But then I see you the next day, wearing the socks." Eicca has won, it's true. Perttu wasn't even thinking of it but his outer pair of socks were in fact bought for him by Eicca.

"You…" he says, narrowing his eyes accusingly, close to laughing.

"And guess what else," Eicca continues. He leans closer, until their noses are nearly pressing together. An electric tension hangs in the air.

"What," says Perttu, almost breathless.

"I bought you _more_ socks," Eicca says, pressing his nose firmly against Perttu's. "They are in my bag right now."

"Did you," Perttu says, pretending to sound uninterested, and then he grabs the side of Eicca's face firmly in one of his hands, his fingers tangling in Eicca's wind-tossed hair, and kisses him as hard as he can.

"Oh," Eicca sighs, burying his face in Perttu's neck and breathing in deeply, "You smell like lavender." 

\---

Perttu wakes up on their second day in Moscow still sore but feeling refreshed, and his head is in the crook of Eicca's arm which is really kind of perfect. 

He smiles a little to think of the show last night, where he'd tried to stay mostly in his chair (and did drink another cup of tea with honey and lemon before going on stage—maybe they should put it on their tour rider) but halfway through the show in the midst of their "Enter Sandman" cover he couldn't resist standing up, hunched over his cello and bowing furiously, to get a better vantage point for grinning maniacally at the audience. And he and Eicca had ended up back to back playing 'dueling cellos.' Afterward Perttu had been so overheated he took his shirt off—though it's always a question of 'when' not 'if' he'll do that—and Eicca had given him the most intensely smoldering look that had seared him down to the bone and fuck, he can't wait till they get a moment alone.

Which they don't, not immediately anyhow, the band instead deciding to go tour the Kremlin (with Paavo taking a hundred pictures as usual) and shop for silly swag because Mikko has decided in his slightly hung-over state that he wants a Russian hat. There are no mirrors in the gift shop and he tries it on by looking at the other band members in the hat. When Perttu puts it on with a completely straight face, Mikko busts up laughing.

"We'll have to give this to Perttu instead," he says, grinning. "Wow, you look so stupid."

Perttu makes a little sad face.

"He doesn't want it," says Eicca, somewhat crossly, taking the hat off Perttu and smoothing it down in his hands. 

"Okay, jeez." Mikko waves his hands in front of him. He snatches the hat back from Eicca and balances it delicately on his own head. 

"It's meant for you," Paavo says, pulling it down over Mikko's eyes. "Very stylish. It's flattering." Mikko pouts and flips him off. "No, wait, I'm serious! I really like it."

Mikko, although apparently disbelieving, stalks over to the counter and pays for his hat. 

As they follow him out the door, Perttu grabs Eicca roughly by the shoulder (trying to ignore the fact that it excites him a little to do so) and says under his breath, "Look. You said you would stop trying to protect me. Now you're just trying to protect me from the others trying to protect me. It's not different."

"I don't know _what_ to do with you," Eicca says with an exasperated sigh. 

"Just leave me alone," Perttu snaps, but realizes instantaneously it's not what he means. "No, just…act normal. I don't know." He sighs, and hangs his head.

Mikko is still fuming as they continue down the street.

"Seriously," Eicca says loudly after a few minutes of no one talking, making Perttu glad that probably no one within earshot knows a word of Finnish, "Why are we all mad at each other?"

Everyone remains silent for a few more minutes. 

"Well," says Paavo hesitantly, at last, "In my case, I am very tired."

Eicca puts his arm around Paavo's shoulders. "Maybe we realized at last that touring kind of…" He doesn't say _kind of sucks_ , Perttu figures, because after a show like the one last night you couldn't possibly say 'touring' and 'sucks' in the same sentence.

Perttu's aching muscles are still like a constant beat in his head, but there's a sudden frantic glee in him that's just now starting to drown it out.

He sighs and then roars like an animal and plants his face into the back of Mikko's head, draping his arms over Mikko's shoulders.

"What are you doing?" Mikko says through laughter, but he grabs on to Perttu's hands and squeezes them.

So no, touring doesn't suck, couldn't possibly suck, not on this crisp sunny Moscow day with the strange shapes of old Russian churches rising up above them and the street full of pretty young people in wool scarves and hats and the old ladies walking their tiny dogs, not when tonight there will be ear-splittingly loud music and the four of them beating the shit out of their instruments and roaring at the crowd and clean crisp hotel sheets to fall on afterward (and a few milliliters left of floral-scented shampoo)—not then.

But it does take a lot out of them, still. It's taken Perttu's full use of his limbs, for one, and apparently the entire band's ability to tell different types of flowers apart, and they can see it's nearly stretched them out to the point of snapping. Suddenly they're all incredibly giddy that this is their last show away from Scandinavia on this tour, despite the fact that playing live is what they live for. 

The rest of the walk back to their hotel, they don't let go of each other.

\---

And it's the kind of night that is exactly what they live for. If yesterday's show was incredible this one is more so, with their energy no longer so much a fury as an intense joy. Perttu's face hurts from grinning. The rest of his body hurts because he hardly ever stops moving all night. 

Still energized after they stay around to pack up their gear and sign records and T-shirts and sometimes people's skin, they decide to go out on the town. Eicca, Paavo, and Mikko chase vodka shots with dark beer while Perttu sips hot tea with honey and lemon.

In the midst of singing along with British 80s hits on the canned music (for certain values of 'singing' and 'along') Mikko slams his beer glass down on the table and says, with an unusual amount of fire in his eyes for Mikko, "Let's settle this."

"What?" Paavo asks, blinking, drunk. Eicca claps him on the shoulder. "What are we settling?"

"All our arguments," says Mikko, nodding sagely. "Let's just all air our grievances and make up."

"You are drunk, my friend," Paavo says. (Pot, kettle, etc., thinks Perttu.)

"Well, fine," says Eicca, shaking his head with a little amusement. "I just wish we would all stop fighting."

"I am mad at Paavo because he was very rude about my hat," Mikko says, smiling sweetly.

"It was a compliment," Paavo says, apparently having held on to his grievances all day too. Perttu can hardly even remember why he was angry, instead just deliriously happy to see the others red-faced and smiling again. "It was a real compliment."

"What?" Mikko says, dropping his stein and staring.

"I mean I like your hat," Paavo says, toying with a paper napkin. Mikko looks as blissful as a saint. Perttu shakes his head and laughs, seeing exactly what Eicca saw, how utterly ridiculous this all is. 

He glances over at Eicca to share a private laugh, but Eicca has busied himself with ordering another beer.

"Do you remember what we argued about? Did it matter at all?" he asks softly into the noise of the room. Eicca doesn't even hear him, but Perttu doesn't care anymore. He closes his eyes and sighs into his third cup of tea, blowing steam up into his face. Tomorrow, home.

\---

The plane ride back to Helsinki is interminable. Perttu tries every single possible sitting position on the plane, stretching out his legs under his seat, sitting with his feet tucked under him or his knees pulled in to his chest, even resting his legs in Paavo's lap because he no longer has any shame, but nothing soothes his aching or even provides the smallest amount of comfort. And that's just Perttu: the only one of them who isn't hung over. He can only imagine how much worse life is for his traveling companions.

And then somehow, amazingly, gorgeously, it's over.

They get back, and they pick up their cellos, and they are all ready to head back to their own houses and apartments. Except Perttu doesn't, not yet. It occurs to him that even at home, being alone is something of a terrifying prospect right now. So instead he follows Eicca, leaving his cello case at the door where he's left it so many times, and the two of them curl up on Eicca's huge soft bed where they sleep the rest of the day and most of the night.


End file.
